Meaning of insist in English

insist

verb [ I ]

/ɪnˈsɪst/ us

/ɪnˈsɪst/

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to say firmly or demand forcefully, especially when others disagree with or oppose what you say:

[ + (that) ] Greg still insists (that) he did nothing wrong.

Please go first - I insist!

insist on She insisted on seeing her lawyer.

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She's 85 now, but she will insist on doing all her own housework.
The men at City Hall insist that big spending cuts are just not practical.
The police insist that they are not relaxing their campaign against drugs.
They insisted that all swear words be deleted from the article.
She insisted on telling me every single detail of what they did to her in hospital.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Stressing & emphasizing

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Phrasal verb

insist on doing something

(Definition of insist from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

insist | American Dictionary

insist

verb

/ɪnˈsɪst/

Add to word list Add to word list

to state or demand forcefully, esp. despite opposition:

[ I ] She insisted on seeing her lawyer.

[ + (that) clause ] Greg still insists (that) he did nothing wrong.

insistent

adjective us

/ɪnˈsɪs·tənt/

I heard a soft, insistent rapping at the door.

insistently

adverb us

/ɪnˈsɪs·tənt·li/

She was insistently cheerful.

(Definition of insist from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of insist

insist

Yet, from the standpoint that insists that 'values', 'opinions' and 'tastes' influence decisions identically, such differences are invisible.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It does not shun predictions, but insists that predictions be based on models that capture underlying processes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Despite their waning interest in genuine political reform, however, donors have continued to insist on nominally democratic systems.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The immigrants insisted that others should join them at their earliest opportunity.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Let us insist that special loci, which are the fixed-point sets of the action of the modular group are simultaneously algebraic, arithmetic and totally geodesic.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Jacksonians insisted that, like the common schools and the press, political parties were critical agencies of political learning.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Should they insist that workers have an "affirmative" right to better work conditions, a right that superseded their employers' freedom to contract?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Ministers in conflict with their parishioners were quick to insist on the obligations of unconditional obedience.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

By contrast, all the protagonists of diphtheria antitoxin serum insisted that it was a therapeutic treatment.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Finally, the author insists that there should be a common syntactic analysis of these so-called operators, though it is rather unclear why.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They might insist, that is, that there are only negative duties and permissions, so that all acts of aid are supererogator y, not obligatory.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Both, however, insist that an understanding of the modern occult will change how we understand modernity.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For a similar reason we also insist that there must be at least one lambda.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Firstly, they insisted that they could like music without relating to it or identifying with it, and that songs couldn't teach them anything.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

And where scientific approaches tend to narrow down, insisting on procedural and stylistic conformity, performative ones sprout out, cultivating procedural and stylistic originality.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of insist?

Translations of insist

in Chinese (Traditional)

堅持說，強調, 堅決要求…

Meaning of insist in English

Phrasal verb

insist | American Dictionary

insistent

insistently

Examples of insist

Translations of insist

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